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Public Housing
Background The city has tried throughout the years to create mixed-income communities with varying degrees of success. Most efforts have been unsuccessful. Hurdles * Upper middle class people do not move to mixed-income, government-built communities. * Moving people from the "projects" is hard too as home is home, even when it is public housing. Obvious solution: Nix public housing and offer vouchers (Section 8) instead. This seems to work a bit better, but it fails if it happens all at once. : A good example of a failure is in the West End, which deteriorated more rapidly than similar Pittsburgh neighborhoods in the 1980s and 1990s when nearby public housing units were, relatively speaking, abruptly closed. ::It's a classic case of "there goes the neighborhood," with nearby owners selling out quickly and being replaced with absentee landlords looking to get the Section 8 rentals. Those landlords realized that the displaced people would want to remain near friends and family so they were likely to move to the closest neighborhood with cheap housing. Conspiracy theories The notion of the city selling the land that was once used for public housing to some private developer does not ring true as the land isn't valuable -- in most places. Housing projects in the past generations acted a bit like a tumor, destroying the value of the adjoining properties. Pittsburgh's efforts of a land grab to create middle income places (i.e. Crawford Place) has had limited success. It's hard to pinpoint if it's another failure of government-backed development, because there's no control group -- the private sector has been historically (and wisely) reluctant to invest in such property. Most of the public housing now being slated for a date with the wrecking ball in Pittsburgh and other cities was built in the post-war years as a place to temporarily house returning G.I.'s and their families -- hence the nice views (almost every project in Pittsburgh has an absolutely incredible view). Somewhere along the way -- and my research never got far enough to pinpoint where or when -- public housing shifted to a permanent solution. Another potential solution via Hernando DeSoto and former President Clinton The city sells its public housing units to the current tenants for $1. This move puts the property back on the tax roles. Taxes are less than current rents for the residents. Residents have a ownership. It's a radical notion that would never have legs politically, but nothing else has really worked thus far. Off paper, however, the idea is just an idea and fraught with problems, the most obvious being that even $1 and the burden of ownership is probably overvaluing some of these properties. The lack of ownership opportunities in the mixed-use developments the city built in the 1990s is part of the reason they haven't been wildly successful: middle class residents were enticed with low interest loans, but those loans remained out of reach for many of the traditional public housing inhabitants that were being moved to the new developments, forcing them into another renting situation. Without ownership, properties deteriorated. The few people who did buy units suddenly saw that investment devalue. The Poor I am concerned about the poor and I am concerned that we do not tax ourselves into deeper states of depression and compound the problems for the poor. :At times, I have been poor. I come from a modest background. My father was a school teacher. Mom was a nurse. I paid my own way through college. My biggest paychecks came as a swimming coach. I'm certainly not from money nor do I consider myself wealthy. As we lower taxes, more people will have more money to take care of their families, their friends and neighbors. We've seen that if people own their own property, they take better care of it. No surprises. Of all the taxes, we need to lower the deed transfer tax as that his hard on those without much savings who try to purchase a home. Move in here When we moved back to Pittsburgh from Chicago, my wife and I rented and quickly set out to buy a house in Pittsburgh. I was pleased, then, with the offerings at that time from the U.R.A. Back then one of the central missions of the U.R.A. was to help first time home buyers. The deparment had a grass-roots approach and gave a modest boost to facilitate in the process for prospective owners, even with little on hand for down payments. But the tone and mission of the URA has shifted in a drastic way in the past two decades. Now, it seems, the URA does not care about the little guys in the neighborhood. Rather too much time is devoted to massive projects. That's going to end. Freedom If zoning laws were less strict, the homeless could afford plain yet liveable apartments or rooms in rooming houses. There are many things we can do to improve neighborhoods, but they require local effort. Government gets in the way. Our policy needs to shift to insure that government gets out of the way. Housing Housing Authority for the City of Pittsburgh Trends The 30-year trend has been a systematic take-apart of larger housing complexes. The federal plan is to remove state-run housing and privatize it. :Pittsburgh had various high rise apartment buildings that have closed and are being torn down, if they are not already gone. Pittsburgh has also had entire neighborhoods of town-house like apartments that have also been unassembled. :Some former public housing areas in Pittsburgh are now vacant fields. Some are with only a couple of buildings and a few occupants. A fraction remain and they are slated for eventual removal. Problems swirl with "Section 8 Housing." The removal of large housing projects brings a migration of the occupants into other living quarters. The poor have been put into other houses and apartments throughout the city as well as the county. The design was to diffuse and scatter the occupants. rather than have such a concentration. This displacement of thousands presented opportunities for others in the private sector to obtain housing property and convert it into a Section 8 unit. Landlords get payments from the government. The tennants get housing at low costs and the landlord gets competitive returns and rates on the property. The governmental roles are diminished without needing to serve as an overall caretaker of gross amounts of units. Turning Sour This approach can deliver win-win-win situations for renters, owners and the government. However, when things go bad, they can go very bad for many involved and near to the situations. Issues: * land use * neighobrhood impacts * absent landlords * absent reinvestments * shortage of inspectors * renter's rights and responsibilities Platform Proposals Public Housing is a top priority in terms of all housing needs. Pittsburgh's deeds and mentality: outhouse to penthouse. The trend: subsidize the rich. We have Mayor Tom Murphy to thank for all of his efforts to subsidize housing for the rich. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Part of the objection to these programs comes in the hard costs in terms of out-of-pocket cash. Another side of the objection comes to the attention given to these upscale efforts. They suck all the life out of everything else. We need to switch our priorities to the older housing stock that Pittsburgh is already blessed with up and down our neighborhood streets. We could tear down and rebuild mansions, but that is not who we are or what we should be about -- in terms of public office holders and policies of the mayor's office in Pittsburgh. If you want a country club home on a country club fairway, you shouldn't be looking in the city proper and insisting that that the mayor run around to do your dirty work to make it happen. We'd love to have more affluent neighbors, but the marketplace is going to need to be respected. An additional 25,000 residents calling downtown their home neighborhood would be great. Do it. Buy it. Build it. However, get in the back of that line when it comes to putting in a request to have the mayor strong arm others for your sake. Sure, it is nice to be able to turn a slag dump in the east end, just behind Squirrel Hill, into a new suburban neighborhood. Hold a lottery to sell the properties as they are so wildly popular. Get $200,000 to $400,000 homes onto the market. Wonderful, this is nothing but subsidized housing for rich folks. We should turn the entire city into Somerset at Frick Park standards, but, we don't have the printing press to make the money to fund it all. The city is broke. The city has to pull its own weight. The price of those new homes at Sommerset at Frick don't come close to their true costs. Sure, it is great to have the city swoop in and take away a small factory, Pittsburgh Wool Company, and turn it over to a large corporation, H.J. Heinz Company, and promise jobs. But then comes the end run so we get new high-class condos along the north side of the Allegheny River. Wicked nice digs! Those are by-gone practices that won't wash with a new mindset and leaders. The Housing Authority needs to open its records and data. : The number of units per street, block, ward and neighborhood need to be revealed. : Complaint information and status with an accessible help desk. : Landlord data; such as primary residence, location from residence to units, number of units, relations to others, complaint log, inspection reports. Moratoriums, suspensions, gradings and de-certified expected : The West End, so it seems, has become a dumping ground for seemingly countless numbers of new Section 8 Housing units. : A stretch in Baldwin, outside of the city, has seen a dramatic shift too. : The Mayor, working with City Council and the Housing Authority, should be able to get a grip upon the situations and issue moratoriums on out-of-control elements. The moratoriums need to be made public and public hearings need to occur to avoid the perception of any back-room dealings. Suspensions Evictions can occur and need to happen when a lack of respect is documented. Landlords, tennants, the authority workers, and the networked system all need higher measures of accountability. :This approach can't be put into effect in one swoop. However, we can begin to study the situation, make guides, find distant owners who are with nagging issues and complaints. We can then curtail their expansions. We can de-certify the Section 8 status as necessary. Skyrocket Housing Authority accountability with matters of democracy. Board members for the Housing Authority should be voted upon by the general public. Key executives should be able to be fired by the people when he or she does not get super-majority votes of retention. Binding and non-binding referendums can and should be put to the people of the city so as to better share concerns, solutions and an open discussion. Reinvestment Criteria Establshed A building inspector visits the housing units before they can become Section 8 eligible. To avoid repeat visits, keep inspector employment low, and still allow for continual fix-ups that are bound to be expected, a new reinvestment criteria policy is needed for the trouble areas, landlords and properties. A landlord should be able to save receipts and turn in notorized paperwork that shows how 15-percent of the payments are re-invested into the property each year. If nothing is done one year, then 30% needs to be put into the property the following year. Housing Authority Police and law enformcement coordination increases. Teamwork is needed. Open records can help. Monitor and reduce point to point drive times. The city should strive to tighten requirements for property owners so that the distances between the rental property and their primary residence is minimal. If landlords lived next to their rental units, thousands of problems and issues would evaporate. As a goal, all landlords with B- grades would be prohibited from obtaining additional property beyond a two mile distance of their primary residence. :We don't need a rich guy buying 10 or 20 properties in a run-down city neighborhood and then living 10 or 20 miles away from the problems. Problems occur. Landlords who are living near to these problems are going to be quicker to respond and more invested in finding solutions. Publish and flourish. We can post materials on the internet (handbooks, tip lists, contact information, owner's contacts). We can offer some workshops on how to be a good landlord, fix-up Section 8 units and make some in-roads to giving rewards to those who are able to move away from a Section 8 house and get real homeownership. Resident's programs merge to the Pittsburgh Park District. Presently, programs of many types are offered to the residents of the Housing Authority, depending on which housing facility they reside within. These programs should be made open to the public. Furthermore, all of these programs should migrate out of the Housing Authority realm and into that of the new Park District. The Housing Authority programs need to be vibrant. Scholarships can be made available. However, we want to get build community. When and where we play, we want people coming together from all walks of life, from all neighborhoods, with all backgrounds and interests. We need to learn and practice playing well with others, and sadly, in my humble opinion, private play isn't serving anyone as well as it should and could. :For example, one program that has been used in other parts of the country deals with technology, home computers, high speed internet access. Housing tennants can get equipment and be part of a wide-area network in Norfolk, Virginia. We should do this for all of the city. Every student should have a computer and net access, not just those in Section 8 Housing. We can bridge the digital divide if we set out to take everyone along. We can't bridge these divides by building walls. Housing Authority We can do more with the Housing Authority. The Housing Authority has been moving more and more into questionable deals. In the summer of 2004, the Housing Authority gave rights to a developer but insisted that the land be owned by the Authority. Splitting the land and building caused extra smoke and confustion and raises lots of questions about corruption. image:links.gif * Private housing * Poverty